A Private Concert for a Young Filipino Man and More

Riley decided he wanted to throw a small get together on Saturday. He invited everyone to come around at 5:00 p.m. for drinks and a few snacks. For a while, he and I contemplated whether or not we should cancel the party due to the weather, considering the small storm we rolled through over the weekend.

Nevertheless, we decided to push forward and were armed and ready at 5:00, except we weren’t, because we were an hour late to our own party. Apparently everyone had got the time change memo except for us and showed up at the right time, but we were nowhere to be found.

The two Mexicans and Sicilian on the boat to our right were the only guys brave enough to rustle around in what felt like a rollercoaster simulation. It helped that they were shitfaced beyond belief. Riley caught glimpses of them throughout the day having a hot tub party in their underwear together.

After about 30 minutes, they saw we were outside waiting on people to show up. They began to slowly make their way over. The Sicilian made a pizza, which was probably laced with LSD, based on my first impression of him. He contemplated throwing it over to our boat, but his last remaining shred of logic must’ve told him not to. Once they finally made their way over, it was apparent this was a conversation I would be okay to hold for about 9 minutes.

The Mexicans spoke little English, but what they lacked in conversation, the Sicilian made up for in charisma and weed.

Where there should’ve been eyes, there were two, barely open slits in his perfectly oval shaped head. Little sprouts of wispy light brown hair shot up like grass from the center of his egghead. He was extremely tan and rounded out like a thin pregnant woman: skinny everywhere, except his stomach.

I tried to ignore his eggish debauchery by speaking to a nice young Israeli man that happened to tag along with their group, but after a few minutes of small talk, the Sicilian rolled up his 90th joint of the day.

This immediately gave me a headache. With the rocking from left to right, the smoke and the fact that no one could understand each other, I just wanted to lie down.

“I think I’m going to go inside,” I said, as Eggbert coughed a smoke plume into every cell in my body.

“NO! PLEASE! I BEG YOU!” he whined with pizza on his breath.

It was more of an intense reaction than I anticipated. Not convinced by his less-than-heart-wrenching cries, I made my way downstairs to rest and spent the rest of the night teeter-tottering around watching movies.

Naturally, Riley came to check up on me during the lesbian scene in Black Swan, which must’ve been pretty exciting for him.

That night, I got the ab workout of my life, trying to center myself on the bed so I wouldn’t fall off. I woke up with my whole body being sore and feeling like I had to walk around or I’d go crazy.

Thankfully, there’s a small gym here, so I climbed off the boat and made my way to the top of the big boat.

I was happy to find that I was the only person in the gym that day. The boat is very noisy and the acoustics in that room are very good, so I figured singing at the top of my lungs wouldn’t be a problem. I put my headphones on and pressed start on the treadmill.

As I did my best Lana Del Rey impression, I suddenly noticed I had gained one solitary fan: a young Filipino guy with a tall black man bun resting atop his head.

God knows how long he’d been standing there, so I just kept singing. We seemed to understand one another without communicating: I was here to sing very loudly, while he was here to silently judge me.

He was busy at work, though, and paid me little to no attention. With a tender, loving touch, he caressed a few table tennis paddles. There was a photo framed in glass in front of me, so without looking directly at him, I could see what he was doing from his reflection.

He examined each paddle very carefully to see if it needed to be fixed. He moved the whole bucket of paddles to the window and began laying them out in the sun. After determining which ones he’d mend back to health, he then began gathering weights from around the weight room and setting them on top of the paddles. I’m assuming he was trying to straighten them out or prevent them from curving, but I legit have no clue. All I saw was this strange process, which felt very scientific in nature. It was like he was conducting research on these paddles, and for all I know, he could’ve been.

When it was time for my live concert to end, I bid him farewell, in which he did not look at me and continued his very important, methodic work. There was no time for chit chat: the table tennis paddles needed tending to.

In other exciting news, I ate at the cafeteria. On a scale of 1 to 10, the food sat at a solid 3.5. I felt bad for the two vegetarians on the boat. Their first course was a plate of coleslaw. The main entree was two pieces of corn on the cob, which was followed by plain white rice. The rest of us got gyros and a fancy garlic dipping sauce that made me have to brush my teeth 3 times in a row.

After dinner, we went up to the bridge to go meet the captain of the boat, who begged the question: how humanly possible is it to look like the Terminator?

He stood at about 6’4 and was a light pink color. The captain/roided up mole man spoke with a strong Ukrainian accent, but I didn’t hear a thing he said because I was too focused on the fact that he had no hair. I don’t mean he was balding—I mean he was completely hairless. No hair on his head, eyebrows, face, arms or legs. I’m not sure if this is a condition, or he just mistakenly bathes in Nair.

“We go slow,” he firmly stated.

“Around 9 knots. We can go up to 14, but we not go. Weather is bad, but be better on Wednesday,” he told us.

We’re going 10.3 miles an hour. At this rate, we should be in Italy by May 2020.

He then invited us on a tour of the engine room today. Riley seemed excited to check it out.

Other than that, I’ve just been working and having pretty good fun. I normally work in the main salon, where a dark brown, serious-looking Buddha statue makes sure I stay on schedule by fully creeping me out. I shall check in again soon!